How independent have the Spirit Awards winners been compared to Oscars? You might be surprised

The Film Independent Spirit Awards began in 1984 as a way to shine a spotlight on smaller art-house movies that often were made on a shoestring budget and came from entities outside the major studios. From its inception as an alternative to the likes of the Academy Awards, titles that were eligible have been required to have a budget cap of $20 million, although exceptions could be made. It is also a more populist organization. While a select group of committee members choose the nominees, anyone who can afford to pay a yearly $95 fee can vote on the final outcomes online.

With Friday morning’s announcement of this year’s slate of Spirit contenders (see the full list of nominees here), it is as good a time as any to investigate just how independent these awards are these days.

The Spirit Awards aren’t a perfect bellwether for which titles and talent will compete for Oscars. Nor should they be. But in the past 10 years both groups chose the same winning lead actress 60% of the time. They picked the same film and supporting actress 50% of the time. And their lead actor and supporting actor choices lined up 40% of the time since 2008.

The biggest discrepancy between their picks seems to be with directors. They only agreed once in the past decade: both gave French director Michel Hazanavicius their helming prizes for his 2011 silent film “The Artist.” Let’s see how often the Academy Awards and their spunkier low-budget counterpart have agreed upon the honorees in similar categories in the past 10 years. (Overlaps are highlighted in bold.)